Lion House,The (6 page)

"Who's Frannie?" he asked slowly. '"Who is Frannie, what is she...?' You tell them, Jo. You tell them who Frannie is..."

I lit a cigarette. "The Brownes," I said. "New friends of ours. We met them in the Fall, through Wingo. Wonderful people, both of them."

Brad laughed again; the same soft laugh that seemed to hold a secret in it. "Wonderful people," he said. "Boy, that Frannie sure is one wonderful people..."

"Don't sell Marc short," I put in. "Marc is
─"

"Marc is okay," he said. "Marc's okay all right, only
—Marc doesn't like me. Tell me: why doesn't Marc like me?"

"He does," I said. "Why do you think
—"

"Oh, he does not. Stop making with the Big Happy Family. Marc does not like me. Men
never
like me, come to think of it
—you know that? You see all these guys sitting around talking; at parties, you know? Getting
along.
Well, not with me; I'm out of it. Even when I'm right there, I'm out of it. And Marc does not like me, and I wanna know why. Why doesn't he?"

I didn't answer. If it was true, I didn't want to hear it.

"But what the hell," he went on, beginning to smile. "Frannie likes me. Franni-o, than which there is no whicher..."

"Come on, Brad," Helene urged. "You've got us all hanging by the thumbs. What's she like?"

"She's
─" I knew he was going to say it. I knew the words by heart now, and I sat there feeling that if he said it I would scream. "She's—nothing but a little kid with big glasses and bitten nails..."

"Well, then, why all the fuss about her?" Dick asked.

Brad lifted himself heavily to his elbow and tried to focus his eyes squarely into Dick's. "Dickie," he said. "Dickie, m'boy..." His speech was suddenly furry as a squirrel. "She'z a girl
—who knowz howda:
wake up!"

None of us got him. "Wake up?" I asked with a laugh. "Never struck
me
as the early-bird type. Sleeps till noon most of the time!"

"'S not whadda mean," he said, swaying a little. "Whadda mean is: sh' knowz howda wake up
me!"
With effort he turned again to look at Dick. "Dick," he said; and his words came clearer now, strengthened by an interest in what he was saying. "Dick, y'oughta been here. Th' other night she was over, playing anagrams. Can she play anagrams! Only anagrams isn't the only thing she plays... Well, I'm taking this nap, and when it gets to be time to play, Franni-o comes up to wake me." He sat up then, dropped his head into his hands, and chuckled. "Walks around looking like s-somebody's k-kid brother," he went on. "But the way she wakes you up...
oh, you kid!"

"Hey, wait
—" Dick began, bewildered; while Helene, that paragon of propriety, went scarlet with embarrassment.

But Brad didn't notice. Carried away on the wings of an inner triumph, he was singing. Driving home his point like a battering ram, dropping his punch like a ton of bricks, he was singing
La Marseillaise.

I got to my feet. I walked out of the livingroom into the kitchen. Automatically I began to wash the brunch dishes. I picked up the glass pitcher. There was just about an inch of the stuff left at the bottom.
You did it,
I thought, looking at it before I spilled it out; personifying it; talking to it within myself as though it were alive with a heart and a brain and could hear me.
You did it. If it hadn't been for you he wouldn't have got that bad; if it hadn't been for you he might never had let me know.

But I thought it without feeling; or maybe I did feel, but I can't remember the feeling now. You can't ever recall pain; not actually; not really the way it was. Once I asked Frannie about childbirth. She had been standing at the window with her back towards me. The way she leaned on the sill made her jeans stretch flat and tight across her buttocks; and her feet were bare. I had been reminded of modern dancers: slim, boyish ones who have a litheness, a grace no female ever has. And when finally she turned I asked her (why: I haven't the slightest idea) to tell about the pain.

"You can tell about it intellectually," she had said, slowly, thinking as she talked. "But in the repetition it loses its meaning and becomes something else. It's supposed to hurt; I suppose it did
—and I must have known then. But I don't know now; not the way you mean, anyway. I only know that when they brought me down I was happy. I was so happy the world swam. But I can't tell you what that was either. Can anybody ever really tell what it's like when the world swims?"

After the dishes I went upstairs. I could no more have faced the Finches than my own mother; nor could I bear to look at Brad.

We had a spare bedroom on the second floor: a tiny cubicle with one small window. We used it as a storage place for clothes and valises. There was a cot in it. I went in and locked the door behind me and lay down. There was an old mustard chair cushion lying on the floor. It wasn't ours. It had been left by the last tenants; or other tenants years before them. I reached down and picked it up and covered my face with it. It was damp and dirty and it made me sick; but, unreasonably, I wanted to be sick. I pressed it down against my nose and mouth and tried to take the stench in. I gagged and a gush of something warm and stinging flooded my throat. When I caught my breath I was crying.

Brad came up a while later and knocked a jaunty drum-beat on the door. "Hey, Jo," he called, "we're going out for dinner!" I didn't answer; and soon I heard his footsteps fading down the stairs.

I didn't come out. I stayed there, sleeping, waking, thinking, sleeping, waking, thinking: of Brad and Frannie. I saw them in my mind, suspended above me, swinging back and forth like a double mobile. But no: it hadn't been that. I knew. It had been the other thing. Frannie and I had talked about it one afternoon
—the way we talked, the way we seemed to
have
to talk, about everything. She'd done it a thousand times: the boy from Yale; boys after him; then Marc. She said she liked it. I didn't. It had always made me feel used; cheated; left out, somehow. "You're doing it all for
them,"
I had said to her. "What do
you
get out of it?"

That's how it had been that night when, like a fool, I sent her up to get him for anagrams. I wished it had been the other way. It might have been easier to take. I don't know why, but it might have been easier.

Lying there alone, I saw them again. I saw the look on his face; the surprise as he awakened. I saw her head; the back of it, bending forward, and the short, blonde ends of her hair.

And suddenly I was part of it; needed, wanted, had to have what she had given him for my own; but who was there to give it to me if not I, myself?

It wasn't easy. It never is. Love is a two-way, four-way, ten-way thing. Love thy neighbor; love thy lover; love the world. But love thyself, and lose thy soul. Because this isn't, this of all things isn't, this for none of us has ever been all right.

Let it happen,
I prayed to nothing I believed in;
let it, let it happen!
And when it did I prayed again: words reaching like a child's arms into swirling darkness:
let it be all right.

The next morning I left the room to take a shower. Helene and Dick and Brad were already downstairs. I spent an hour stalling before I forced myself to join them. Helene had made a pile of scrambled eggs. She and the men were eating at the kitchen table.

"Well, hello!" Brad said as I came in. "Welcome back."

"Eggs," I said. "Look how fluffy."

"Pot," said Helene, "with cream. And you whip them with a beater while they're cooking."

"How do you feel?" Brad asked.

I glanced up from my plate. "Fine."

"Martinis are hell on you," he said warmly. "You ought to stick with highballs, Jo. Cocktails always throw you for a loop..."

You bastard,
I wanted to cry out. But I just kept on eating my eggs.

After breakfast Helene and Dick went upstairs to pack.

"Don't," I told them. "Stay till tonight. I'm okay now; really I am. Don't go."

I was able to keep them for an extra hour or so, but finally Brad and I drove them down to the station and made our farewells.

I didn't say a word to Brad all the way home. It was only after we'd got inside the front door that I opened my mouth. "Your turn," I said.

He looked at me questioningly. "Your turn to pack," I said. "Start now."

His eyes widened; then his shoulders dropped and he sighed. "Oh, Jo. Stop being silly."

"Pack," I repeated. "I've had it."

He stood there, searching my face for its old, reliable forgiveness. "Listen," he said, putting his hand on my arm, "come on in and sit down and let's talk it over."

I let him lead me into the livingroom and we sat down on the couch. "Don't bother talking," I said. "Nobody lives this way forever. It has to stop sometime, and sometime is today. Get out and stay out. And this time it's for real."

My chest tightened and I heard my voice break.
This time it's for real.
What of the other times? Hadn't they too been for real?: once in Washington after a thing with a cousin of mine; and in Denver with a girl from the office; another in a small town in Florida; a fourth in Pittsburgh; a fifth in San Diego... I'd made him leave all those times; but I'd always found out where he was and within two or three days I'd phoned or gone to see him and he'd come home.

"You're crazy," he said now, sitting beside me. "You've got it all wrong, Jo. It was nothing."

"I know what it was."

"You don't, Jo. Believe me. It was nothing."

"I know what it was.
You told everyone. You even sang it.
La Marseillaise
—remember? Subtle, aren't you?"

"Subtle? What are you driving at?"

"You know damned well what I'm driving at. I'm no great disciple of Freud and I'm sick to death of all that crap, but it doesn't take a scientific mind and half a life in Vienna to figure out what a man means when he describes his latest conquest with a blast of Francais!"

"Oh, Christ
—that was only a gag!"

"Was it?"

He lowered his eyes.

"I know," I said. "I wasn't born yesterday. And what's more, you want me to know. Just dropping the general idea isn't enough for you. One twisted little way or another you've always got to throw in the details. Remember Ann? The one you nick-named
Lassie?
God, what a clever little gag
that
was. When I finally caught on to what
Lassie
meant I could have gagged my insides out."

He gave up then. "All right," he said. "So you know. But what you don't know is Frannie.
She
did it. It was
her
idea. What the hell did I have to do with it? Christ, I've been fighting her off for months!"

I tried to laugh but it didn't come out too well.

"It's true, Jo!" he went on. "I swear it is! That time we went to get the soda? I had to park to save our lives. Face it: that sweet little friend of yours knows more tricks than a French whore."

"Get out," I said.

"Stop it, Jo," he begged. "It doesn't make sense. You're being hysterical. You know what it's like for both of us without each other. You'd call, or I'd call, and then I'd be back in a few days."

"It's different this time," I said. "This time it's different and I want a divorce."

"But it isn't, Jo! It's the same old
nothing!"

"It's Frannie," I said. "That's what makes it different. I can't stand having it be Frannie." I was beginning to cry.

"Sure," he said. "You can't stand having it be Frannie. You couldn't stand having it be Ann either. She was such a
nice
kid, wasn't she? And then there was your dear, sweet cousin Kitty: she wasn't to blame either, I suppose."

"No. She wasn't," I told him. "She was a child."

"Child? She was twenty-five years old'. So now Frannie comes along and. you're white-washing
her.
Why, Jo? Why is it that
they're
always right? Why aren't you ever on
my
side?"

"I'm not on anyone's
side!"
I shouted. "But you do it to people! You get into people and they're lost! Up till now I've put up with it. But now it's Frannie
—and I can't bear to have it be Frannie!"

"Jesus, Jo," he said slowly, "there are times when I wonder... What the hell are you
—queer or something?"

I stopped crying. I stood up and looked down at him. Then I slapped his face so hard it made my palm sting. It took him by surprise. He put his hand up against his cheek and stared at me wide-eyed, like a little boy. Within seconds his own tears brimmed over and trickled down between his fingers.

He left. He took an overnight bag with a couple of shirts and his shaving things. It was all right: he could come for the rest of his clothes later, while I was at Wingo.

I watched him from the front door. He tossed the bag into the back of the car and got in and started the motor. Halfway down the driveway he stopped and leaned out of the window. Seeing me standing there, he smiled. Then he revved up the motor again and, inanely, waved goodbye.

It was mid-afternoon; but I went up to bed. I took a drink with me, and the
New Yorker.
I couldn't read, though; and the taste of liquor made me ill. I fell asleep looking at his picture: the one I'd shown Frannie that stood on the bedtable; and the one beside it
—the snapshot of my father: "You had to go and die of a cold," I said aloud, ridiculously.

During the evening the phone rang. I knew it was Brad, but I answered it. "It's me," he said. "I'm at Wadsworth Hall in Trent Place. I thought you might want to know..."

I hung up.

The next morning I got up feeling terrible. It was too early to call Wingo; but I reached one of the bus drivers at his home and asked him to tell them I was sick and couldn't come in. Then I went back to sleep and didn't budge till the phone woke me at noon. It was Frannie. "What's wrong?" she asked. "I tried to get you at school to ask you to come over this evening. They said you were sick."